Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn’t killed our hearts. It’s killed men’s hearts. It’s silenced them, it’s cut them off.
Interpretation
This quote criticizes the harmful effects of patriarchy on men, suggesting it stifles their emotional expression and well-being.
Eve Ensler's quote highlights the detrimental impact of traditional masculinity and the patriarchal system on men's emotional lives. Rather than solely affecting women, she argues that these societal pressures significantly harm men by discouraging them from expressing vulnerability and deep feelings, ultimately leading to emotional disconnection and suffering.
In practice
In a discussion about gender roles during a seminar on masculinity.
Dancing insists we take up space, and though it has no set direction, we go there together. Dance is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, and contagious and it breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere, at anytime, with anyone and everyone, and it's free. Dance joins us and pushes us to go further and that is why it's at the center of ONE BILLION RISING.
Before cancer, I was obviously disconnected. I had a tumor the size of a mango inside me and didn't do anything about it. It wasn't like I didn't know something was wrong.
It's a weird thing about the truth: It protects you. What really makes you vulnerable is when you're lying because you're going to get caught. When you tell the truth, there's a strange relief that comes.
Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, "You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission."
Security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure.
I've been involved in social activism my entire life, and I would argue that many people involved in social activist movements have done very little work on themselves.
Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.
The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.
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